Meanings in a meadow 25 May – 29 June 2013

Chert is pleased to present the second solo exhibition of Swiss artist Jérémie Gindre.

“Meanings in a Meadow” explores the hidden messages within a landscape. The exhibition is made up of half-abstract, half-identifiable signs, which stem from mapping, geometry and organic forms, that create unexpected parallels or forced logic. To search for meanings in a meadow, one must find solutions through applied reverie or reach a certain lyricism through theory.

For his second solo exhibition at Chert, Jérémie Gindre contemplates the different activities that take place in a distinctive area – from beekeeping and agriculture to camping and golf – and confronts their systems and variations. Here, Gindre’s work borrows as much from science as from American conceptual art, for example, several titles are direct references to books by Ed Ruscha or Sol LeWitt.

“Seven Campgrounds and a Beehive” connects plans of campsites from across the world with a traditional, pastoral beehive. The work observes how we temporarily occupy space and organize colonies within open land. “Prairie Parade” is a series of 24 portraits of native or naturalized prairie grasses, creating a curious inventory of characters. “Variations of Bee Hotels and a Golf Course” presents a series of shelters for solitary insects and the plan of a golf course. In both cases the principle is the same, namely to present a number of holes in a defined perimeter; the ‘bee hotels’ embody a naive relationship with green spaces, in contrast to golf’s brutal domestication of wilderness. The pathway in the lower gallery space extends the idea of an organised route, recalling public footpaths in nature reserves.

Jérémie Gindre’s work is strictly connected to the idea of narrative; all his pieces seem to be witnesses of a story, which they meticulously report to us. Geography, history and tourism are also focuses of interest for the artist, whose research delves in the direction of peculiarities and curiosities of nature, and human interpretations of them.